Sri Lanka Mirror case set aside

By T. Farook Thajudeen

The case filed by CID against Sri Lanka Mirror accusing the website of having contained defamatory items against the President and the State was laid by and the suspects were ordered to appear before Court if noticed by Additional Magistrate Prasanna De Alwis yesterday.

When the case was taken up for inquiry, CID Inspector Anura Silva informed Court that Colombo University had facilities to safely store the hard disks that were recovered from the computers taken into custody from the Sri Lanka Mirror Website.

Thus Counsel Upul Kumarapperuma appearing for the suspects moved to hand over the computers to the first suspect after removing the hard disks from them. The Magistrate ordered the CID to make prior arrangements with the first suspect to hand over the computers to the owners after removing the hard disks. He ordered the suspects to make statement to the CID.

The Magistrate while overruling an objection taken by the Defence Counsel claiming that the arrest was made arbitrarily against the law cited the judgment of the ‘Helping Hambantota’ case and pointed out that the Supreme Court had ruled that since no complaint was received by the Police against then Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa, the Police could not maintained the case and it was dismissed. He said in the present case the CID had acted on its own accord without any complaint made against the suspects and argued that the CID could not initiate investigations into the website without a virtual complaint.

The Magistrate observed that if the Court accepted the defence objections, it would adversely affect the fundamental principal of law and the Police would not be able to act on anonymous complaints made to the Police against grave crimes.

The Magistrate further observed that since the CID had failed to conclude the investigations and given the possibility of taking a prolonged time to conclude the investigations, ordered the suspects to appear in Court if noticed for them to appear and laid by the case. The CID on 29 June raided the offices of the Sri Lanka Mirror Website and the Sri Lanka X-news Website at Pitta Kotte and the Narahenpita residence of Lanka Mirror Editor Ruwan Ferdinandez, alleging that there was anti-Government material on the premises. Later the eight suspects arrested at Sri Lanka Mirror were released on Police bail on the direction of the Magistrate.